1877 - Wakelin, R. History and Politics - Leaves from my Writings, p 69-100

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LEAVES FROM MY WRITINGS.

INTRODUCTORY.

I INTEND to give in the few remaining pages, in an abridged form, some of the leading articles which have appeared in one or other of the newspapers with which I have been connected in New Zealand, that are on subjects of permanent interest, or which, in my opinion, possess historic value. They will be chiefly selected from the New Zealand Advertiser and the Wairarapa Standard, because I happen to have imperfect files of those papers in my possession. There has scarcely been a paper published in Wellington, except the Argus and Times, to which I have not contributed leading articles, including the Spectator, the Morning as well as Evening Post, the Daily Advertiser, the Daily Telegraph, the Wairarapa Mercury, and the Wairarapa Journal; but the papers with which I was longest connected as editor were the Independent, the New Zealand Advertiser, and the Wairarapa Standard, all of which largely increased in circulation during the time they were under my editorial direction And I can say this was the case also with the various journals with which I was connected before my departure for New Zealand.

When necessary I shall accompany each article with such introductory or explanatory observations that I think may be required. It was my original intention to have inserted a number of political predictions I had from time to time hazarded, which have since been verified, but it having been intimated to me that this would not be in good taste, I have forborne doing so. I very much regret that I have not sufficient space at my disposal to refer more at length to the history of the abolition of the Provinces, and to Sir George Grey's re-appearance in the public arena; but I will take this opportunity of placing upon permanent record, my deliberate opinion that the time and the mode adopted for destroying Provincial Institutions reflect no credit on the Parliament, the Press, and the People of New Zealand; while the record of the manner in which Sir George Grey has been treated by all three will be looked upon by future generations as one of the blackest pages in the history of the Colony.

SIR GEORGE GREYS NATIVE INSTITUTIONS.

I have not thought it necessary to refer even incidentally to the Waitara war, nor to the causes which led the Duke of Newcastle to ask as a favor the resignation by Sir George Grey of his Governorship of the Cape, in order that he might resume the Governorship of New Zealand, as all such matters as those are well-known, and will not fail to occupy their future place in the history of the colony. Soon after his return to New Zealand, or about the beginning of the year 1862, Sir George Grey devised a scheme of institutions, under the designation of "a plan of government, for native districts." The Fox-Sewell Ministry, then in power, manifested an unconcealed determination to secure for themselves, at all hazards.

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and at any sacrifice of political consistency, a share of His Excellency's merited popularity, and they consequently wished to be deemed the authors of the scheme in question. To show the difference between the views of the Governor and his Ministers on this subject was the object of the following article which appeared in the N. Z. Advertiser of July 26, 1862. --If the Native policy we have heard so much about is His Excellency's policy, let him carry it into practical operation, and let the House vote the money required for the purpose, as demanded by the Duke of Newcastle. It would be better that he should retain the patronage the policy creates, than that the colony should accept the responsibility which the patronage implies. No Ministry, with the feeble checks which exist here against its abuse, should be clothed with the patronage this policy confers, and no Ministry, until the pending war is brought to an end, after "first producing in the native mind such a conviction of our strength as will render peace, not temporary and precarious, but well-grounded and lasting," should take either the responsibility or the burden of native affairs from the Imperial Government, to whom they at present right fully belong.

The reader is requested to notice, that what the Governor calls a plan of government for native districts, Ministers call a plan of government for the native race. That while he is anxious that all parts of this island should participate in the benefits of law and order, they wish to adapt the plan, in the first instance, to the present condition of the natives only. That while he proposes to create machinery by which the welfare of Her Majesty's subjects, both European and native, can be maintained in those districts where no such machinery exists, they propose, as far as possible, to use the rude native institutions already existing for this purpose. That, while he has in view the fostering and development of the resources of the interior, they wish, not so much to govern the natives, as to assist them to govern themselves. That, while he wishes to devise a system which, at this critical time, both natives and Europeans will gratefully accept, they will leave the important matter of land sales substantially in the hands of the runangas. That, while his great object is to establish European centres of civilisation in many parts of the Northern Island, they have only in view the native race. That, while he recommends institutions which he thinks are equally well suited for a native, a mixed, or a European population, those they recommend are only adapted for the residents of a Maori pah. Further, while the Governor would establish a medical officer in each district, as much for the sake of the Europeans as of the natives. Ministers -- having only Maories in their eyes--attach but little importance to mere pharmaceutical ministrations among the natives. While they very properly consider that the best doctors for the Maori are the mill, the cow, and the butcher's shop, the Governor sees--what they had failed to do--that a medical man would help to draw them to the spot. The Governor looked to the civilising influences the residence of a medical man with his wife and family, would have on the habits of the natives, while they only think of the effects the prescriptions would have on their systems. While the object of the Governor is to afford to the outsettlers that protection and sense of security which is essential to enable them properly to occupy their farms, the Ministers have the interests of the native race only in view, or rather the patronage which the scheme will create.

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SIR G. GREY AND THE CONFISCATION POLICY.

THE following article which appeared in the New Zealand Advertiser of December, 1861, immediately after the resignation of the Whitaker-Fox Ministry, possesses historic value. The sale of the confiscated lauds to speculators, was the object of the Ministry; their settlement that of Sir G. Grey:--

We have always understood that the policy of the Assembly, which the Whitaker Ministry was placed in office to carry out, was the suppression of the rebellion by force, and the establishment of military settlements on confiscated lands with the object of making in future all Maori rebellions impossible. That policy, said Sir George Grey, was based on that which he adopted in British Kaffraria, and he declared that he could devise no other plan by which the permanent peace of the Colony could be provided for. The confiscation of the lands of rebels, he told the Secretary for the Colonies, and subsequently, the Aborigines' Protection Society, "will deter other tribes from committing similar acts when they find that it is to be, not a question of mere fighting which they are to do as long as they like, and when they please to return to their homes as if nothing had taken place, but that such misconduct is followed by the forfeiture of large tracts of their territory." This was the policy of Sir George Grey and of the Assembly.

We have, nevertheless, the fact put on record, that the interests and safety of the Province of Taranaki were being neglected, that the troops might be retained in the North and extensive districts handed over to Auckland land speculators who had probably obtained their money by means of a large Commissariat expenditure. We do not say, nor do we believe, that Ministers were actuated by any such views; but we maintain that such were the natural fruits of their policy. The Whitaker Ministry, we have not the least doubt; desired to make the present the last of native rebellions, and to make the cost of its suppression fall upon those by whom it had been so wantonly provoked. But they hoped to secure these ends rather by the acquisition and sale of rebel lands than by the settlement and profitable occupation of such lands after they had been acquired.

To establish military settlements for points of defence, for inflicting some punishment on rebel natives, and with the view, to some extent, of reimbursing the cost of the war will be one of the objects of the present, as it was also of the late Ministry. This was and is also the object of his Excellency, and as with reference to Sir George Grey's "New Institutions" so with reference to this question of confiscation and military settlements, the plans of His Excellency appear to us more statesmanlike than those of his Ministers. In the former case Sir George Grey looked to the construction of roads and the settlement Of native districts for the solution of the native difficulty rather than to the development of the runanga scheme or the establishment of a theoretical scheme of Government for the native population. So now he appears to regard with more favor similar means to secure this end than he does the establishment of military settlements far removed from the bulk of the European population, and at an enormous distance from roads and markets. Not that he is unfavorable to the confiscation scheme, as we shall presently shew, but because be sees that it is only by the construction of roads and the beneficial occupation of the Waste Lands of the North Island by a European population that the prosperity and security of both races can be promoted. We know it has been industriously promulgated that Sir George

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Grey after the receipt of Mr Cardwell's despatch of the 26th April, altered his views with reference to the confiscation of the lands of rebel tribes; and so also we know it was equally as industriously promulgated by his enemies, during his former administration of the Government of the colony, that he was opposed to the establishment of Representative Institutions, but his published despatches on both questions show that he has been wrongfully accused. With reference to the latter question, at the very time he was being denounced by nearly the whole press of the colony as the deadly opponent of free institutions, he was recommending to Earl Grey a form of Government for New Zealand more liberal by far than had ever before been granted to a dependency; and with reference to the confiscation question, we find him stating on the 25th of May, in reply to the charge made by Ministers that he had altered his views on the subject, "that his views have never varied as to the propriety and necessity of confiscating large portions of the territory of the Waikato, Ngatimanaiapoto, and Ngatiruanui tribes; portions which in extent should be made, in as far as possible, to vary with the degree of guilt of the several tribes or sections of tribes. He has always felt strongly the necessity of such confiscation and has perhaps expressed himself strongly in regard to it." The confiscation of the lands of rebels for the establishment of English settlements, and as a punishment for rebellion Sir George Grey approved of; but he did not go so far as his late ministers in the policy of seizing native lands in a way that while it would put them in the hands of speculators, would not cause their settlement by a European population.

PROVINCIALISM. - A PREDICTION.

THE following was published in the New Zealand Advertiser of September 25th, 1862. It affords some explanation of the reason why Provincialism became unpopular:--

If it be determined to maintain the Provincial Councils and Governments, they should--to answer any good purpose--be, in all provincial matters, entirely independent of the General Legislature and Government. The power and jurisdiction of the latter should be confined to the few matters which are in their nature of federal concern. In this case the general expenditure might be reduced within half the dimensions to which it has now swelled; in the other, one half the expenditure caused by the maintenance of the Provincial Governments would be got rid of. We venture to predict that when the land revenues of both Islands become exhausted, and when additional taxation has to be resorted to in order to pay the interest on loans which had been stupidly raised and foolishly squandered, this question will assume an importance which it does not now possess, owing exclusively to the circumstance that a great portion of the provincial expenditure has been heretofore provided by the proceeds from the sale of the waste lands, which, by an unwise compact, have been treated as provincial rather than as general and local revenues.

So long as the powers of the Provincial Governments were beneficially exercised, and those of the General Government were restricted to matters exclusively of general concern, we were disposed to think highly of the provincial system which was established by the Constitution Act; the manner in which the country had been colonised, and its physical and geographical characteristics being very favorable to the developement and healthy operation of such a scheme.

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Viewed theoretically it possessed many advantages, which doubtless would have been its practical results had it been honestly worked, and had been permitted fair play. This, however, was not its fortune. In the Provinces men grasped at power to subserve the most selfish purposes, or to gratify a low ambition, and endeavored to this end to make a Provincial Council resemble the Imperial Parliament, and a Provincial Superintendent a little king, surrounded with his Responsible Ministers and miniature Lord John Russells. In the General Assembly the self-same performance was enacted, only it was on another and wider stage. To secure power, patronage, and pelf, appeared to be the principal objects of the leading actors in both theatres, and "centralism" and "provincialism" were the mere watchwords used by the contending parties to represent the same thing. Each party were provincialists when in power in the Provinces, and out of office in the General Assembly; and both were centralists when seats in the Central Government came within their reach; or the objects of their ambition.

In theory nothing, for a Colony like this, appeared better than the provincial system established by the Constitution--the general and local interests of the Provinces were both fully provided for by the establishment of a Superintendent and Council --the one representing the general interests of the Province, and the other the local interests of the separate districts of which it was composed. It ought, therefore, to have been the aim of those favorable to such a system to maintain the independence and free action of both, in order that through the Council the particular interests of each district might be represented and upheld, and that through the Superintendent the junction of particular local interests might not be permitted to operate to the injury of the general interests of the Province. In practice this system has proved a monstrous delusion; because the Superintendent possesses all power in his own hands, and the Council is nothing but a snare or sham. The real friends of this system ought, while maintaining the veto of the Superintendent inviolate, to have allowed him to exercise no patronage except by the advice and consent of the Council, who should have maintained their constitutional control over the public purse; and, while giving the head of the Province a liberal salary, they should have prevented him becoming the tenant of an estate which he was appointed to administer, and have restricted him from engaging in trade, or from becoming a Bank Director. The pretended friends of the provincial system in this Province pursued a course the very opposite to this; they allowed the Superintendent to become a large runholder and Bank Director, and placed all the revenues of the Province, and the patronage of the Government, at his disposal. They permitted him to expend the public money without any legal authority, upheld him in the course he adopted by refusing to convene the Legislature, and, when at last it was convened, they maintained he did right in acting in direct opposition to the wishes of the people, as conveyed through their representatives in the Council.

THE ALABAMA.

THERE is no article I have ever written which affords me so much satisfaction as this. It was published in the New Zealand Advertiser of 17th October, 1863, at a time when there was not a newspaper in New Zealand and not one in the Australian Colonies, that was not singing the praises of this now too famous cruiser. I stood alone in taking an opposite course and in defending in the teeth of public opinion the cause of justice

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and right. I solicit the attention of the readers of these pages to this fact, for there is nothing remarkable in the article itself viewed in the light subsequent events threw on the doings of the Alabama; the only thing remarkable about it is that it should have been published at a time when "the sympathies of most Englishmen were in her favor."

Tho Canterbury Press of the 12th instant expresses itself as not a little surprised at the views we expressed with reference to the enthusiastic reception given to the officers and men of the Confederate cruiser Alabama at the Cape, when we stated that we knew of no deeds of bravery they had done to entitle them to receive the honors of heroes, and that the capture of the Sea Bride--a Federal barque--within sight of a neutral port, could not be justified. The Press observes:--

"It is not worth while to show that the proceedings of the Alabama are legitimate, for we should suppose that hardly any reasonable person would dream of maintaining that they were otherwise. There is so much genuine romance about the Alabama and her proceedings that it is not wonderful the sympathies of most Englishmen should be entirely in her favor. She is in a state of continual jeopardy, and is the successful heroine of what must be allowed to be a very uneven combat. She is one vessel against a whole fleet, yet she is continually beating her opponents, not perhaps in hard fight, but in matters for the successful issue of which qualities of highest order are required. Her appearances are mysterious: she is here to-day and there to-morrow; her conduct has always been generous and courteous; no single piece of cruelty can be laid to her charge; she has done a good deal of damage, but this it was her unavoidable duty to do; she has done the damage, but she has done it without inflicting unnecessary pain. She is brave; she is wary; she is generous; she is mysterious; she is waging a most unequal light en behalf of her country; and, over and above all this, she has been gloriously successful. How is it possible but that we should wish her heartily good speed?"

We are quite willing to be classed amongst those unreasonable persons who doubt whether the capture of a merchant-ship belonging to a friendly nation in British waters was a legitimate proceeding; and we doubt, moreover, whether the Press would have thought so had the merchantman been a Confederate barque, and the man-of-war the San Jancinto. We rather fancy we should have heard a good deal about such an outrageous insult upon British authority; while the cries for vengeance would have been both loud and deep. We must confess that we can see nothing very romantic in the proceedings of the Alabama, nor because she is in continual jeopardy do we see why the sympathies of most Englishmen should be entirely in her favor. By the same rule every outlaw would be entitled to our sympathy, as he would be in continual jeopardy, and for this reason his proceedings would necessarily partake somewhat of the romantic. But we must not be surprised that the sympathies of the Press should be excited in favor of rebel slave-dealers, after its unmistakable exhibition of sympathy for rebel Maories, and rebels in general.

We are told twice in a half-dozen lines that the Alabama is mysterious, generous, and wary! We must be permitted to question her generosity, and we do not see why her mysterious and wary proceedings should entitle her officers to the honors of heroes. But, we are told, "she is waging an unequal fight on behalf of the freedom of her country, and, over and above all this, she has been gloriously successful." Now, to wage an unequal fight on behalf of the freedom of our country would entitle us to the

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honor and sympathy of mankind, whether successful or not; but we know that the only freedom the Alabama in fighting for is the freedom to do wrong, and we can see nothing glorious in the successful capture of peaceful and unarmed merchantmen, or in running away at the approach of danger. If the Alabama had attacked, fought, and beaten a Federal cruiser, superior to herself in size, speed, men, and armament, there would be some reason for bestowing honors on her officers and crew; while we should not trouble ourselves by examining too nicely into the merits of the cause in which she was engaged. But the Alabama has done nothing of the sort. She has been "gloriously successful" in escaping from vessels which would be able to compete with her, and in pouncing upon vessels "like a wolf on the fold," which she knew were not able to offer any resistance. The sympathies of ail right-minded Englishmen are instinctively enlisted on the side of the weak when contending with the strong; but if that is the position of the Confederates it has not yet been that of their famous cruiser. It has rather been the position of the vessels she has taken, plundered, and destroyed.

We have said the liberty the Alabama, is fighting for is the liberty to do wrong. We challenge the editor of the Press to disprove the accuracy of this statement. It is usual for the advocates of the Confederates to endeavor to make it appear that the Southern rebels, like those of Poland, Hungary, or Italy, are fighting for freedom and nationality, but they are really fighting for nothing of the sort. The only rebels they resemble are the Texans, who raised the standard of revolt against Mexico, because the Mexican Constitution forbade the establishment of slavery in any part of the Mexican dominions. It is usual also for English journals in the Southern interest to deny that the Federals desire the abolition of slavery; but though there may be some doubt whether they are really fighting for the extinction of slavery, there can be no doubt whatever that the Confederates are fighting for its extension. But admitting that the Confederates are right and the Federals wrong, we cannot see what heroic deeds have been done by the officers of the Alabama to justify the ovation given to them at the Cape.

PRIVATE EXECUTIONS.

The following article was published in the N. Z. Advertiser in February, 1862, immediately after the execution in Wellington Gaol of Color-Sergeant Collins for the murder of Ensign Alexander, at Wanganui. The incident related in the article of the man tried for murder, and afterwards convicted for highway robbery was one which came within my own knowledge. It occured at Middletown, Connecticut, in 1840. And here I may mention that the views expressed on this subject, as well as those I have expressed on most others, have been obtained not from books but from observation and reflection; for books at best only give second hand information, a view I have set forth in the article on the Steam Press:--

This is emphatically a squeamish age, and a great deal of mock sensibility prevails now, as it always did, among the novel-reading and romance-writing portion of the public. One of the latter fraternity could write an elegy on a dead ass and allow his mother to starve in a garret; and with regard to novel readers they have increased a thousand fold since the days of Sterne, and, as a consequence, sickly sentimentalism and sham sensibility have increased, we fear, at something like an equal raitio. We can understand those who object to the punishment of death being inflicted in any case, but not those who--while they uphold the punishment would have, it carried out in

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private. The most that can be said against public executions is that they have not so great a tendency, as was at one time thought, to prevent the commission of crime. It does not, for example, deter the pick-pocket from carrying on his nefarious calling; but does even a court of justice? He will ply his trade within the precincts of the one as in the sight of the other. If neither will prevent the commission of crime, neither certainly per se is the cause of its commission. If the sight of a person being executed will not prevent the embryo murderer from growing into a finished assassin, a private execution can certainly have no effect of that kind. Moreover, to put a man to death within the walls of a prison is repugnant to the feelings, the habits, and the character of Englishmen. There is something outlandish and Turkish about it. It savors too much of the spirit of the worst of despotisms. John Bull detests all secret and underhand proceedings; what is done, be likes to see done fair, openly, and above board. If it is right to put a man to death, let there be no secrecy and privacy about it; if death punishments are inexpedient or indefensible, they ought not to be inflicted; and are they not less likely to be abrogated by being kept out of sight than they would be if exposed to the public gaze? We cannot see any solid reasons against public executions that could not be advanced with more or less force against private ones; but we can see many good reasons why, if a man's life is to be taken from him, it should be done in the light of Heaven and in the presence of his peers. It is the general belief that there is something less henious and repulsive in the conduct of an open highwayman than that of a dark assassin; and, if a judicial murder must be consummated, we think that it will be the almost universal feeling amongst Englishmen -- uncontaminated by the cant of the times--that it is better that it should be done in public than in private--openly than in secret.

The opponents of capital punishments quote statistical tables to demonstrate that such punishments are not only inexpedient but that they tend to produce those very crimes they are intended to restrain From a return laid on the table of the House of Commons the adversaries of death punishments endeavor to prove that, during a given period, when the law was most leniently administered there was a diminution in the number of capital crimes; and, that, during another given period, when the law was most vindictively administered, then were capital crimes on the increase. This return, however, in our opinion, does not prove anything of the kind. The large number of capital punishments, inflicted in a given period, was doubtless owing to the large number of capital crimes that had been committed within that period. It is not punishments, capital or otherwise, that will prevent crime, but where good government exists there it will be found that crimes are most rare. It is not so much the seventy as the certainty with which punishment follows crime that its repressing influence is most observable. And here we may observe that the punishment of death even for wilful murder is less certain than the infliction of any other punishment would prove. It is felt that an innocent man may be restored to liberty, but that when once dead he cannot be restored to life. Hence there is an extreme reluctance felt by a jury in returning a verdict involving the infliction of death. We will give a case in point. A man who waylaid a country storekeeper, on his way to town, and shot him through the heart for the purpose of robbing him of the money he was known to have in his possession was tried for wilful murder. The evidence was circumstantial

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and all but conclusive; but the jury returned a verdict of not guilty and he was set at liberty. Subsequently he was tried for the highway robbery, when he was at once convicted and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. It follows that had imprisonment for life, instead of the punishment of death, been the penalty of his crime, there would have been no hesitation on the part of the jury, in bringing him in guilty, whereas, under the circumstances, had he only murdered and not robbed the man, be would have got off scot free.

Mr Recorder Hill says, "I do not believe in the great deterring effect of punishment; I think it in overrated." And the late chaplain of Reading gaol--where the new prison discipline doctrines were enforced--says. "I believe that the mere dread of punishment, as threatened by any law, either human or divine, very seldom prevents crimes." We do not expect that murders would be more or less frequent if the punishment of death were abolished; but we do believe that were it abolished the murderer would have a less chance of going unpunished, and the fate of the victim and not that of the culprit--as is now frequently the case -- would be more likely then to enlist the sympathies of the public. We are persuaded--as we on a former occasion observed -- that our present treatment of criminals and mode of suppressing crime will be viewed by unborn, generations with as much horror and surprise as we now contemplate the cruel and irrational means employed by our ancestors for a similar purpose; and that the private strangulation of a prisoner, under a judicial sentence, will not be taken as an evidence of the religion, philosophy or humanity of the nineteenth century.

THE STEAM PRESS.

THIS article also appeared in the New Zealand Advertiser on November 10, 1864, and is as true new as it was then.

The steam press has made the present a reading age. We saw a complaint made in a periodical a short time ago to the effect that people read so much now-a-days that they had lost the ability to converse. If this were the only loss occasioned by this lazy habit, the injury would be but trifling. When people have nothing to say they had better say nothing. The inordinate passion for reading which is exhibited on all sides injures, in more senses than one, the eyesight. It prevents its victims not only from conversing freely but observing clearly. Their heads become the store-rooms for second-hand articles, even as those of their favorite authors are, but the retail shops for the like commodities. Since the commencement of the present century, books, newspapers, and readers have increased a thousandfold; but we are not aware that the century has been equally as prolific of great thinkers or of great men. As the distaff has given way to the spinning-jenny, so have men in this age of steam presses left off thinking for themselves. They obtain clothes for their minds, as their wives obtain their dresses, from some fashionable shop--the more puffed the more patronised. Formerly, both were homespun. Less fine, perhaps, but also less flimsy. With all its books and newspapers to boot, the century has produced no poet, philosopher, or statesman equal to those of the reign of Elizabeth-- and no public men to be compared with those of the Commonwealth.

These truths will not be disputed; but thirty years ago we expected more valuable fruits from the establishment of National and British schools, penny magazines, and an unstamped press, than have been yet obtained by these means for the diffusion of useful knowledge. We then expected that before this time "village Hampdens" would be as

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plentiful as blackberries; and Miltons, also, who would be neither mute nor inglorious. The distance in this case certainly lent enchantment to the view. Not the slightest intellectual improvement has been observable. As regards political life and activity, the present will bear no comparison with the past. We never expected that the mere ability to read and a taste for reading would make men poets, patriots, or thinkers; but we did expect that they would not be so likely to be duped as in the days when a newspaper was a rarity and schools "few and far between." But how stands the case? Is not the world as full now as ever it was of quacks of all kinds, and does not the steam press enable them to drive a more thriving business than they were ever able to do before? The fact is the generality of men in all ages have never taken the trouble to think for themselves, but have invariably allowed others to think for them, and the multiplicity of newspapers and of books instead of diminishing has rather facilitated the practice.

The steam press may create readers and readers authors, as facilities for communication create traffic, but patriotism is not generated by the same process; and neither political enlightenment nor public spirit in this Colony has yet been created by its public press. The well known fact of the editor and proprietor of the leading daily journal of the Middle Island with difficulty finding a proposer and seconder to nominate him to a seat in the Colonial Parliament is a convincing proof, alike of the little influence possessed by the public press in creating or directing public opinion, and of the little influence public opinion exercises oyer our public men.

MY POLITICAL CREED.

THE following articles on Federation, the Upper House, the Land Question, and the Electoral Franchise contain my mature views on most important subjects which possesses more than a temporary interest. I do not expect that my views on those subjects will meet with general acceptance now, but the time will come when they will demand attention.

FEDERATION.

"SMALL Republics within a great nation--this is the saving formula." Thus spoke one of the greatest of modern orators, patriots, and statesman in the Spanish Cortes in 1871. The sentence embodies the political philosophy of the present day and the political practice of the not distant future. The speaker--Castelar --belongs to the Latin race, but the sentiment is wholly Teuton. One of the strongest arguments in favor of provincial institutions was that while they satisfied this bias of the race they constituted a most formidable barrier against insular separation. The demand for such separation in a country like New Zealand has before arisen and will again arise; and it will yet be found that it will not be by fusion but by federation that the two islands can be politically united. The physical features of the country and the natural bias of the race by which it is peopled will lead to the establishment of small republics, held together not by national but by federal ties. Without quoting from the well-known works of Mill, Hare, Freeman, and other modern English authors, let us hear what Guizot has to say. He points out as a general fact which is frequently met with in the history of human race, that interests, forces, and ideas labor to concentrate themselves and to become united; but that when their concentration has been once effected the government thus constituted, at the end of a certain time, becomes exhausted; new interests, new forces, and new ideas, which do not harmonise with each other, arise and come into action. A

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conflict then commences between the forces which tend to separation, and the authority which strives to maintain union. "This phenomenon," he observes, "occurs not only in the political history of societies, but also in every occupation in which the activity of man finds exercise." It is all very well to talk about the concentration and consolidation of the various divisions of great empires, but, with these conflicting forces in operation, it may be reasonably doubted whether any other but the federative principle will be able so to modify the action of each as to render the existence of both salutary and abiding.

Hepworth Dixon has remarks still more apposite than those of Guizot, though much to the same purpose He remarks that society is held together by the poise and balance of two radical powers in man, akin to those centrifugal and centripetal forces which compel the planets to revolve around the sun--the separating spirit of freedom, and the combining spirit of union. Always acting in different ways, these forces hold each other in check; that shaking masses into units; this drawing units into masses: and it is only in their nice adjustment to each other that a nation can enjoy political life in the midst of social peace. He then expresses the opinion that the danger in France lies in too much compression; and in America, prior to the Civil War, in too much separation of the social units. This is the consequence of the inherited genius, prejudices, and instincts of the Latin and Teutonic races; a point which no leading statesman or leading journalist should ignore. The Latin races, as the French, Austrians, and Italians, have a keener sense of union than the Gothic races, and the latter a keener love of liberty and independence; and it has yet to be seen whether any people of the Gothic race will be lastingly consolidated. In face of a common danger, as has been so recently witnessed in Europe and America, they will unite as closely together as any Latin race; but remove the danger, and the unity is sacrificed for freedom and independence. This is the direction public opinion is now taking in the United States, and this is the direction it will yet take in the German Empire.

We have a high German authority for the assertions above hazarded. Gervinus observes that all efforts which aim at the formation of great states, at one common government, and which at the same time endeavor to subject the minds of men to one form of religion, which proceed on the principle of uniformity and unity in state and church, belong specially to the Latin races. The Teutonic races, on the contrary, sustain the principles of national independence, and religious and political equality. He points out that while the Latin races in the middle ages exhausted their strength in striving after extensive dominions, as the French of our day, the Teutonic nations strove after self dependence, and self-government within their natural frontiers. "This bias," he observes, "towards the formation of small states was the life of the Teutonic nations; it gave them an industrial character, and produced an inclination towards peace." Hence, he further observes, the Teutonic nations have never seriously entertained the project of one great universal empire. Even the three Scandinavian Kingdoms have never submitted to be united though they appear to be born to it by situation, circumstances and origin. If this is so, the "fusing," and Procustian projects of the Atkinson Ministry will never be carried into effect; and if ever the New Zealand and Australian Colonies constitute one empire, it will be by the operation of the federative, rather than by that of the national principle, that the union will be effected. It is well that these characteristics of our race should be borne in mind when legislating for

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the future requirements of the population of a country like New Zealand.

THE LAND QUESTION.

THE principal reason why land in England can now only be bought except by those who can pay for it as a luxury, will be found in the political influence it gives to its possessors. Every inducement has been given for the accumulation of land, and no facilities have been afforded for its more equitable and general distribution. The existing land system is a modernised phase of the old feudal system, and for that reason is very unsuited for a country like New Zealand. For centuries past the owners of land in England had the entire and unchecked control of the Government of the country. Mr Pitt held that a land owner with £10,000 a year had a right to claim a peerage, if he were on the right side of politics. And Mr Lefevre asserts that at the present time, as illustrated by the creations of the past three years, a large landed estate, without any public service, or great personal merit, is considered a sufficient claim for this hereditary honor. Add to this that no person could become a member for an English county, without the possession of a large landed estate, and we have another reason to explain why the land in England is in the hands of the few. These facts have a significance to us which we hope we shall be able to make clear. We are following in precisely the same track which has led to the evils which prevail in England--evils which have driven many of us to seek a home at the antipodes. Political power, family pride, social distinction, and local tradition have all been favorable in England to the accumulation of land, and have all equally tended to prevent its distribution. The fact of the Government and the Legislature, both being under the control of the great landowners, is the reason why every encouragement and facility has been given to the accumulation and retention of large landed properties, and every discouragement and impediment has been opposed to the existence or creation of smaller properties. We solicit from the intelligent elector particular attention to this circumstance, and to the causes we have assigned for it. Land in England is in the hands of the few, and secures a "fancy price" in consequence of the political and social influence it confers on its possessors.

There will be only a very small number of our readers who will think that it would be advantageous to this country that land should be no more widely distributed here than it is in the United Kingdom. But if this is to be prevented care must be taken that in future large landed properties shall not give its possessors those exclusive political privileges and social distinctions which we have shewn has been the case in England. In England did we say? Has it not already been the case here? Who comprise the members of the whole of one out of the two branches of the Legislature? Do the majority of the members of our Upper House owe their seats to their birth, education, merit, public service, intellectual attainments, or tried wisdom and integrity, or to their wealth and large landed possessions? The question is worth pondering on, for the answer is a practical one and pregnant with meaning. Why were such men as "Barney" Rhodes and "Money" Robinson created Colonial peers, if not exclusively on account of their large landed possessions? These questions suggest a train of thought, when considered with what we have said above, which we will leave the intelligent reader to pursue at his leisure. If it comes to be understood and acted upon here that the possession of large landed estates shall entitle a man to a scat in on

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branch of the Legislature, and entitle him to have five times more votes in the election of the Local Government of the County or borough than the working settler, we shall lay the foundation of those evils we complain of in the mother Country, only they will assume here a less tolerable and a more grinding form. The land of England has got into the hands of so small a number of persons on account of the political and social influence which has been allowed to be attached to it. There are many reasons why this should be so in England, but none whatever why it should be so in New Zealand. In England the possession of large landed estates, as we have before pointed out, pre-suppose the possession of other valuable qualities, qualifications and excellencies, inherited and acquired; but the possession of large landed properties here pre-supposes nothing of the kind. It is those qualities, and not their large estates which distinguish a true from a sham aristocracy. A true aristocracy will in all countries make its legitimate influence be felt and recognised, if no artificial obstacles are imposed to check its manifestations, and impede its force. But though large landed estates will not be the means of creating a real aristocracy in New Zealand, they have been the means when combined with exclusive political privileges, of obstructing the progress and settlement of the country. The circumstance appears to be overlooked that in these modern days there are other forms of property besides property in land, though this was not the case at the time out of which the feudal system originated. There is, however, fewer objections to substantial landed possessions than there is to the granting of those exclusive political privileges which in a far different state of society than what exists now appeared naturally and rightfully to belong to the owners of large landed estates. The presence of one or two large landholders in any rural district would not be without its advantages provided they would be satisfied with that social influence which their wealth, their intellectual attainments, their cultivated tastes and manners, would be always sure to command. It is not well that all the members of a Community should be on a dead level in these respects. And indeed it is only in a new country or in the infancy of society that this could be probable or possible. We hold it to be of the highest importance that in every community there should be men who, from their education and position, are able to take part in local affairs, to contribute to the formation of public opinion, to act the part of good citizens, and to spread to those below them a sense of high civilisation; but that is no reason why they should possess more political privileges than their less fortunate neighbors, or that it is good for the community at large that the bulk of the population should be excluded from the enjoyment of any landed property whatever. We think with Mr Lefevre that so far as the laws and the influence of the State are concerned they should be directed rather to the distribution of property than to its accumulation. The making the "tenure of landed property the fulfilment of duty," was, as Lord Beaconfield has pointed out, the basis of the feudal system, and is now the essence of good Government. The imposition of a graduated land tax could be justified on these grounds; and it will prove the only effectual means, short of the French law of inheritance, of breaking up the enormous landed estates which have been acquired at so trifling a cost, and of preventing in the future that land speculation and monopoly which have all along been the bane and which may hereafter prove the curse of this, our adopted country.

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THE ELECTORAL FRANCHISE.

THE following article was written on the rejection of Sir George Grey's Manhood Suffrage Bill by the House of Representatives in October, 1876:

The time is not distant when some such Bill will be carried; and it is more than ever desirable now that it should be, seeing that the Provincial Legislatures have been abolished, and that the local Governments, to be established in their places, are to be elected on what virtually amounts to a high property qualification. Whatever may be our individual views on this most important of political questions, of this we may be assured--to quote the words of Mill-- "That no arrangement of the suffrage can be permanently satisfactory in which any person or class is peremptorily excluded, and in which the electoral privilege is not open to all persons of full age who desire to obtain it." As there is nothing more certain than that we are too apt to place the highest value on those qualities and acquisitions of the human mind or character which may not be in themselves the most excellent, but in which we suppose ourselves most to excell; so also there can be no doubt that we always place too high a value on those acquisitions which we chance to possess, whether these be learning or riches. Nowhere is this tendency of the human mind more observable than in discussions on the elective franchise. In spite of the fact that when artificial restrictions are removed, as in the case of violent political revolutions, the greatest men, and those too in no insignificant numbers, make their way to the front, the object aimed at has always been to impose those restrictions on the right of suffrage as have the effect, if they have not the object, of preventing so desirable a consummation. The wealthy man not only places by far too high a value on his wealth, but also on the claims to which it is entitled. He cannot conceive how anyone can have a stake in the country, or feel any true interest in its welfare who is not the owner of property. History and every day experience teach a very different lesson; but such lessons are entirely thrown away on those who are determined not to learn them. "None are so blind as those who won't see." So also the college-bred man labors under a somewhat similar delusion. It is difficult to persuade him that the least valuable of all knowledge is that which is acquired at school or from books. With men, as with horses, there is more in the breed than in the training. That may improve it where it is, but it will not develope it where it is not. The most valuable qualities are not the exclusive possession of the learned or the rich; and like the property and titles of the English nobility they are more frequently inherited than acquired. Intellect, common sense, clearness of vision, honesty, disinterestedness, patriotism, conscientiousness, and true heroism, can never be bestowed, however much they may be improved, by education. In no case can they be exclusively claimed by either the propertied or educated classes. Now, as it is the possession of these qualities which is necessary for the right and faithful exercise of the electoral franchise; as they cannot be conferred by either property or learning; and as they have been distributed with an impartial hand by a beneficient Providence amongst all members of the community, it follows that no class should be excluded from the electoral franchise--or we may exclude a Cromwell or a Blake, a Franklin or a Jefferson, unawares. In all countries, and under all forms of Government, the select and most able few will always have the real direction of affairs; but in whose interests those affairs are directed will depend greatly on the circumstance whether all classes, or only one privileged class, has the selection of those by

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whom that few hold office. The history of England teaches us that in proportion as the electoral franchise has been extended, so in proportion have the rights and interests of the classes thus enfranchised been regarded. However happy it may be for a country to have the best and wisest of its citizens at the head of its affairs, they can effect no lasting improvement unless aided by the active co-operation of the whole community. As with individuals, so with a people, it is what they do, and not what is done for them, by which their merit will be measured, and their well-being secured. Even the best and wisest of Governments will not be able to effect any lasting benefit if everything is done for, and nothing by the people. 'No reform,' says Buckle, 'can produce real good unless it is the work of public opinion, and unless the people themselves take the initiative.'

In these days of mammon-worship and political retrogression, the truth cannot be too strongly or frequently insisted upon that there are other excellencies besides riches and learning, and which cannot be purchased by either. We should be the last to try to lower the legitimate influence of both; but when, in addition to the enormous influence they carry with them, it is sought, by artificial restrictions on the right of suffrage, to confer upon their possessors a monopoly of political power, the question wears another and altogether different aspect. Nor should it be forgotten how different are the circumstances of England and those of New Zealand in this respect. In the one the possession of wealth almost insures the possession of a liberal education and of numerous other estimable qualifications; but is this the case in this Colony? Here the extension of the franchise is required, not; only in the interests of the more humble classes of the community, but for the purpose of conferring on birth, breeding, and refinement that influence over mere brute wealth which they cannot now exorcise. It is required also to give the necessary political education to that large class of colonists who must, even under the existing law, eventually enjoy the electoral franchise. This cannot be done by the elementary school, as Mr Lowe, when he told the House of Commons that "they must educate their masters," ignorantly imagined; but it can be done by that active participation in public affairs which the voting at local and parliamentary elections would afford them the opportunity and desire for taking. It is only in this way men can be politically taught; for they cannot otherwise be taught any more than men can be taught to swim if not allowed to go into the water. The able management and remarkable success of many English Co-operation Societies composed exclusively of working men are convincing evidence that intellectual and administrative capacity is not monopolised, like the voting power, by the wealthy and educated classes, as that management will bear favorable comparison with, and in many cases put to shame, the huge bungling of railway direction, and the incapacity displayed in numerous middle-class, joint-stock concerns, by men possessing not only wealth and education, but experience also, Such facts prove convincingly that intellectually working men are qualified to enjoy the electoral franchise, and that its intelligent use can be best acquired by its frequent exercise.

THE UPPER HOUSE.

IN considering the question of the reconstruction of the Upper House there are several points which should by no means be lost sight of. In proportion as you increase the power of one Chamber you will necessarily diminish that of the other. This would be effected either by making the Upper House elective, or by

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HISTORY AND POLITICS.

filling it with men possessing higher qualifications than those possessed by the majority of its present members. In the one case they could claim to be the representatives of the wealth and the intelligence of the community. In the other they would naturally exercise more power than they would do if their qualifications as legislators were of a lower order. This would be effected in two directions. As in so limited a population the number of able and fit men must be still more limited, the larger the number of these who obtained seats in the Legislative Council the smaller would be the number of those who are qualified to have seats in the House of Representatives. Relatively and actually the power of the popular branch of the Legislature would thus be seriously diminished. It is quite true that the Legislative Council is composed too exclusively of one class; but that fault, so far as it is an unavoidable one, is the fault of the Ministry by whom they were nominated. We have observed that the members of the Upper House have shewn quite as much intelligence, public spirit, and conscientiousness as those of the Lower House on all questions in which their especial interests were not directly or indirectly affected; and the way to prevent in future the admitted evils which have resulted from this circumstance would be, not to make the constitution of the Upper House elective, but to disqualify all members from voting on those questions which directly affected their class interests.

What we have said will be sufficient to convince the intelligent reader that the question of the reconstruction of the Upper House is a more difficult one than shallow writers and talkers have been in the habit of representing. Ever since the Constitution Act has been in operation there has been a small but active and powerful section of the community which has aimed to diminish the political equality which was established under it, and to increase the power of the wealthy classes, first, by the cunning manipulation of the representation; second, by the diminution of the powers of the Provincial Legislatures; third, by augmenting the powers revenues, and jurisdiction of the Central Authority, and now, lastly, by aiming to get the Upper House elected on a high property qualification. The course which has been taken here is totally opposite to that which political events have taken in England. As the Age truly observes: "Every fundamental change from the days of Magna Charta down to the date of the last reform Act, a few years ago, has had for its purpose to increase the popular power, to lessen the privileges of caste, whether in Church or State, to diminish the influence of a dominant aristocracy, and institute a genuine democracy as the grand characteristic of the Commonwealth.

Though the progress which has been made in England in the extension of popular liberties has thus been both marked and rapid, it has also been not less noticeable on other subjects, and in other directions. Ten years ago an Act was passed by the Imperial Parliament called "The Masters and Servants Act," with the object of relieving the latter of numerous legal disabilities under which they labored. Last year another Act was passed with the same object; but it no longer bore the same obnoxious title. Instead of "Masters and Servants," it was called the "Employers and Workmen's Act," and the change which was made in the law was quite as remarkable "liberal" and enlightened as the change that was made in the name by which it was designated. We shall look in vain in our colonial legislation for any indications of an equal enlightenment and of a like progress? We account for the fact to the low estimate the bulk of the people have been in the habit of placing on their political privileges, and to the conse-

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quent little interest they have usually taken in public affairs. It was only the other day that a constituency in the Middle Island comprising one or two publicans and a half dozen squatters, had as much power in returning a member to Parliament as the numerous and wealthy constituency of Christchurch. How could this have happened if not for the reasons above indicated? When political privileges are valued so lightly by the great body of the people, constitutional changes, and the whole course of legislation, are not likely to take any other save a retrograde direction. And would not this be the result whatever may be the professed object, of a change in the constitution of the Upper Chamber? If the people so willingly consented, as they recently tacitly did, to give such a preponderating influence to property in the election of a County Council, they will not be likely to offer any strong objection to the giving of still greater influence and domination to mere brute wealth in the election of the Upper House. We are aware that at the first blush an elective Upper Chamber appears to possess many advantages over a nominated one. If, however, it only represented wealth, simply as such, and not intelligence, public spirit and real worth, the fact of its being elected would increase its obstructiveness by augmenting its power. Indeed, the very circumstance of its being elected might of itself be sufficient to place the popular branch of the legislature in relation to itself in a position not unlike the Provincial legislatures held under the Colonial Parliament. Knowing that some of the greatest of England's statesman first obtained entrance into the House of Commons, as nominees of the proprietors of rotten boroughs; knowing how difficult it was for some of the best men to obtain seats in Parliament after the inauguration of the ten pound franchise; and bearing in mind that most public functionaries are nominated and not elected, we have no hesitation in saying that we should sooner see a portion of the Upper House appointed for their talents, eminence, public worth, or public services, than to see the whole of them elected either on a high property qualification, or on the still more vicious and indefensible system, which has been established in the election of the County Councils. Of all despotisms that of an ignorant, selfish, and narrow-minded monied class would be the most grinding and intolerable.

SIR GEORGE GREYS RETURN TO PUBLIC LIFE.

THE circumstances connected with Sir George Grey's re-entrance on the public stage are so well-known, and are of so recent a date that it will not be necessary to refer to them at any length. In October, 1874, he forwarded a memorial to Sir James Fergusson protesting against any revolutionary changes being made in the Constitution until those most interested had been consulted on the subject. "It would be," said the New Zealand Times, "a poor compliment to such a man were his protest passed lightly by at such a time. There are few men in and out of New Zealand of whom we entertain so high an opinion as we do of Sir George Grey, and although we may differ from him on some points, yet we feel pleasure indeed in the fact that at last he has broken silence, and has taken bis proper place as a leading, if not the leading, colonist of New Zealand."

In December of the same year he addressed a letter to the Auckland Herald, in which he pointed out that the policy he had recommended for adoption in South Africa in 1858, which recommendation had been made the ostensible ground for his recall from the Governorship of the Cape, and which was tantamount to inflict-

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HISTORY AND POLITICS

ing upon him a pecuniary fine of almost £2000, had been acknowledged ten years after by the leading men of South Africa as having been a far-sighted and comprehensive policy, while now the very men opposed to him in 1858 are earnestly endeavoring to bring to pass the policy which he then recommended. Let this, he thought, as he mused in his solitude, be a lesson to himself and those who are now aiding him, that men who would serve their fellows must labor earnestly, and bear patiently, and perhaps wait for years before they see the result of their labors. While thus musing, a packet of newspapers arrived, some of which contained personal attacks upon himself "Having read them," he observes, "I felt how useful the previous discipline in relation to South African affairs had been to my mind; and I felt also a kind of keen pleasure that I could once again in the decline of life have an opportunity of serving my fellow men." After referring to the Abolition resolutions, he says:-- "This form of government is now to be destroyed by a Government in which the people are most imperfectly represented, and which from having at the present moment millions of borrowed money at its command, in such an unrestricted manner regarding its disposal as is, I believe unexampled, and is certainly unconstitutional, --has the power of exercising temporarily a dangerous influence both within and without the walls of the General Assembly. The slightest consideration of the small number of men amongst whom these immense sums of borrowed money are in a short time to be spent, will give a measure of what this influence must be, which is greatly increased by the number of contractors and their agents now in the colony, who undoubtedly possess, and have attempted to exercise an influence over public affairs. I think that every man who loves this country, will from these causes alone object to such a moment being chosen as a fitting one in which to destroy all of really representative government which exists here. Truly the time and the conditions were not favorable for making such changes as those proposed.

At the beginning of 1875 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives for Auckland City West, and, on the death of John Williamson, Superintendent of the Province of Auckland, The Otago Daily Times, in commenting on his reply to the Auckland deputation, observed:-- "Whatever faults his enemies may have found with Sir George Grey from time time, no one ever doubted that he was a most devoted New Zealand colonist. The history of his life is one long testimony to the patriotism of the man. For real unselfish zeal for the interest of New Zealand, and uncomplaining self-sacrifice at the same shrine, we do not know where to look for the equal of Sir George Grey." In that reply Sir George Grey announced his intention of supporting a more equitable apportionment of the land revenue than at present obtained, and it was thought not impossible that he would be in favor of a tax on absentees. With reference to this latter question the Otago Daily Times says:-- "With regard to this subject, Sir George Grey has put his finger on a blot. When we complain of our wealthy men returning to Europe to spend their leisure ease, and when we deplore the financial injury wrought to the colony by their secession, we should do well to remember that many leave us because they have not the moral courage to run the gauntlet of abuse through which a new politician must pass ere he achieves an independent position. It is not everyone who can make up his mind to sacrifice ease, leisure, comfort, and endure abuse, misrepresentation, detraction, for the good of his country, like Sir George Grey. As a

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matter of fact, Sir George Grey's entrance upon political life is a thing to be hailed with much satisfaction on several grounds. We think the country will be the better for his statesmanlike views and honesty of purpose, and that his example will be productive of good, by teaching others who are able their duty to their country."

The following passages from his address to the electors of Auckland are worthy of a place in these pages. In the event of the abolition of the Provinces he says:-- "I should like to have such institutions established in the place of the existing Provinces as would secure to New Zealand generally at least those extensive rights in regard to legislation and other matters which the Provinces now possess, and to the various country districts a larger share of local self government, and a greater and more direct control over local revenues than is now given to them." On the settlement of not only immigrants but the children of old settlers on the land he said, "The Superintendent should see that energetic measures are taken to secure the permanent location in the country of the population now here, and of the immigrants who may arrive, by holding out inducements to take up land in the best positions which can be secured to them, and thus lead them to become permanent occupiers and cultivators of the soil. Active steps should be taken to induce people possessing capital sufficient to enable them to undertake the cultivation of the soil and the employment of labor, to again resort to this province, and means might also be advantageously taken to enable children of established settlers to occupy farms of waste lands, and thus to contribute as their fathers have before them, to establish the prosperity of the Colony on a lasting basis." His remarks on the important question of education were also to the purpose. He objected to a uniform house tax for educational purposes and said:-- "All who draw wealth or revenue from this country are interested in seeing that the rising generations grow up educated and well conducted members of the community; but it is the duty of all to contribute with some reference to their wealth, and it seems hard to oblige the struggling laborer to pay largely from his small means for this purpose, whilst those who draw great incomes from New Zealand, pay but a small trifle in proportion to their ability, or, if they be absentees, pay absolutely nothing."

SIR GEORGE GREY IN PARLIAMENT.

ON the appearance of Sir George Grey in Parliament in the session which opened in July, 1875, he was received with enthusiastic applause. I have before me his speech on the address, which is one of the most eloquent that has ever been delivered in a legislative assembly. After making a most eloquent appeal to the Ministry, he said:-- "I now turn to the princes of the people--to those real kings of men--who, by their own labor, have raised themselves from humble positions in life, and have added to the nobility of labor the adornment of self-culture. Upon them for years I have looked with pleasure, seeing them as they climbed from the depths to which in the mother country class distinctions would have sunk them, attain to positions of credit and distinction; and I ask them now, would they kick down and break to pieces the ladder by which they raised themselves? Would men whom I have seen make magnificent farms from bleak barren sterility, whom I have seen achieve great works in spite of all obstacles, who have made the wilderness blossom as the rose, and the earth to teem with the means of supporting a great population--will those men, I say, leave it in the power of posterity, while praising them on the one hand

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for the work they have done, on the other to curse them for having forced upon them a Constitution which may sink them to misery? Will no voice cry aloud to announce to them what is taking place? Will no apostles go forth and convene meetings throughout the country, and give the people an explanation of the circumstances under which they are to live, so that they may consider well the change before it is forced upon them? Will no person cry aloud and tell them that, until they are fairly and truly represented by representatives chosen by themselves to consider this subject they ought not to consent to such an alteration of the form of government under which they are to live, and that they will take no new form of government from such a general assembly as now exists?"

THE COMPROMISE.

IN a leader in the Standard of 21st September, 1875, I refer to the conduct of the Opposition in consenting to the closing of the Provincial Councils on the condition that the Abolition Act Was not brought into operation until after the general election; a proceeding which the Standard alone of all the Opposition journals then condemned. It also was condemned most emphatically by Sir George Grey at the time, and subsequently by most of the Opposition journals in the Colony. I observe:-- "It is fortunate that earnestness is infectious, or otherwise we should despair of the ultimate triumph of the cause which we have so long advocated, and which Sir George Grey has lately so ably espoused. In a fit of inspiration Coleridge once cried out, "Oh! for a great man--but one really great man, who could feel the weight and power of a principle, and unflinchingly put it into act.' By the reappearance of Sir George Grey in the political arena, at this juncture, this aspiration of the poet, so far as New Zealand is concerned, promises to be realised. According to the same authority, O'Connell's influence and success were owing to his assertion of a broad principle, upon which he acted, in which he had faith, and into which he put his whole body and soul. The same influence and success may be secured here by the same agencies; and it is the conviction of this truth which inspires us with hope and confidence in the future of New Zealand.

We have already expressed our emphatic disapproval of the conduct and the results of the late negotiations by the leaders of the Opposition; and we still think they too readily surrendered those points upon the recognition of which they should have insisted, while they only secured those which the Ministry would have willingly conceded had no pressure been brought to bear upon them in that behalf. In order to conciliate their own supporters, the Ministry, in the face of the public meetings held at Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin, and in view of the threatened action in the Supreme Court, would naturally feel no great desire to take upon themselves the grave and enormous) responsibility of bringing the Act into operation until after the result of the general election had become known; and this, in effect was all that they conceded. For this concession they secured without question a vote of a half million sterling, impeded the free action of the Opposition, and left all Provincial works and affairs in a state of the most wretched confusion until after the close of the next session of Parliament.

It is, however, not so much what the Opposition have done, as what they have left undone, to which we now feel irresistibly impelled thus forcibly to refer. With much talk about the desirability of appealing to the country, and with the knowledge that nearly the whole press of the Colony is dead against them, they

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have not taken any steps whatever to indoctrinate the public mind with their views. At the paltry sacrifice of a month's salary by the members of the Provincial Executives in the House, a fund could have been secured sufficient to have paid the cost of placing copies of their revised speeches in the hands of every elector in the Colony. Or probably at a little more cost they could have established a weekly organ at Wellington, after the manner of the Anti-Corn Law League, by which the same object could have been still more effectually accomplished. Instead, however, of doing anything in this direction, they appear to have taken no steps whatever to prevent, to answer, or to render innoxious the sneering remarks made on their chosen leader by the only organ in Wellington which was at one time supposed to be favorable to their views. It is not by such apathy as this that success for any cause was ever deserved or achieved.

Nor, up to the present time, has their conduct in the House been characterized by more tact, zeal, and decision. There are several motions which they could have made which would either have insured them a majority, or would have insured the defeat at the next elections of at least some of those members who voted against them. With the exception of Sir George Grey, Mr Reader Wood, Mr Rees, and one or two others, instead of carrying the war into the enemy's camp, they have contented themselves with futile attempts at warding off the persistent attacks which the Ministry and their supporters have levelled against them. In modern political warfare Fabian tactics are seldom successful. An Opposition naturally and necessarily, to be effective, must be the attacking party. It is a Ministry which has to stand on the defensive. But during the present session all this has been reversed; and up to the present time not a resolution has been moved which would have implied a vote of censure on the Government, scattered confusion amongst Ministerial supporters, or have secured adherents to the Opposition programme outside the walls of Parliament. But, as we said at the outset, earnestness is infectious, and though we doubt whether Sir George Grey will be able to infuse anything of the kind into the selfish advocates of Provincial Institutions within the House, he may succeed in doing so amongst the disinterested supporters of those institutions out of it." But it was not to be; and consequently not even an attempt was made to give the people the opportunity of determining under what form of Government they desired to live.

WHAT ABOLITION MEANS.

IN the first session of the new Parliament held in 1870, Sir George Grey made a speech on certain resolutions which had been moved by Mr Macandrew, when he admitted that there was no one who wished to see Provincialism re-established in the form in which it lately existed, but what Provincialists desired was to see it restored to the state in which the Parliament of Great Britain gave it to us--not in the mutilated form to which the Centralists had reduced it. "The premier," said Sir George "told us that the Provinces did not desire to be restored to the state which they once enjoyed--to those advantages given to them by the Constitution of the country. Why that is precisely what we do desire. That is precisely what we ask for, and the honorable gentleman told us that that the people do not understand what abolition means. It means that a small number of wealthy men should obtain possession of the public lands, and that the rest of the people throughout New Zealand should be reduced to the position of serfs. That is what

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abolition means. It means that those great estates, acquired, as I believe, unlawfully, by honorable gentlemen who sit, or have sat, on those benches, or which belong to their friends, shall be unlawfully secured to them. It means that the mass of the inhabitants of the people of New Zealand, deprived of the power they now have of legislating for themselves, shall be reduced to a state of poverty, of abject subjection of spirit. That is what abolition means. It means to set up one governing race and one governing class, and to lower the rest of the people beneath their feet. It means to attempt to reestablish in this country a system which in the old country is the lament of all right-thinking people. It means to set in power, not an hereditary nobility sprung from the feudal system, but a class of people who, by an adroit use of the land laws, or an adroit use of political power, have accumulated and will accumulate lands and wealth, who will deprive their fellow citizens of what rightfully belongs to them, and will sink the rest of the people of New Zealand in poverty and want. It means to introduce people of a foreign race, who have no knowledge of the British Constitution, who cannot speak our language, who know nothing of the rights they ought to possess, for the purpose of settling them upon their estates. It means to make the free British subjects in this colony contribute largely, often from their small means, to bring these people out, and then compel them to compete in the labor market with people of a lower status than themselves, to go to the wall and lose their status in society."

The reference made to the introduction of the foreign element into the colony, and the effect it had in swamping the votes of the English colonists deserve thoughtful consideration. The fact that at the last election the whole of the Scandinavian electors of the Forty Mile Bush went and plumped en bloc for one of the candidates, and this before some of them had been naturalised, and when none of them either knew or cared about the question at issue affords sufficient evidence of the truth, justice, and necessity of Sir George Grey's remarks.

INSULAR SEPARATION.

IN an article in the Standard of July 22, 1876, I refer to the effect which the abolition of the Provinces will have in strengthening the demand for insular separation, and observe:--

In an article of 12th September, 1874, under the heading "Strike! but hear," we said, "One of the evils of which there is some danger from the sudden abolition of Provincial Institutions is no less than that of the disruption of the colony by the establishment of insular separation. Another is the removal of the seat of Government from Wellington, which would be the consequence of such separation. Without question the Provincial system of government has hitherto proved a most formidable barrier to the political and financial division of the Colony; and, without doubt, if that barrier be suddenly destroyed the cry for insular separation will again be raised, with the almost certainty of being ultimately crowned with success. This is a matter which concerns Wellington more especially; but it also concerns everyone who desires to maintain the unity of the Colony." In the next issue we again returned to the subject and dwelt on the evils which would result from the absorption of all legislative and administrative functions by the Central Government. On the 20th January, 1875, we had another leader on the question, which the New Zealand Times pronounced the most able one that had ever appeared in support of Provincial Institutions; but no reference whatever was made

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by our contemporary to the following remarks which now possess more interest and significance than they did at the time they were published. We said:-- "It would not be difficult to prove that had the two districts of country now constituting the independent colonies of Victoria and Queensland enjoyed from the first Provincial Institutions they might now, as then, constitute with New South Wales one powerful and independent colony. We beg the attention of the people of Wellington to this view of a broad question, and we ask them whether they think the seat of Government would have been removed to Port Nicholson, or that New Zealand, any more than New South Wales, would have continued one colony under the General Government, had it not been for the existence of Provincial Institutions?" On 13th February, 1875, we again directed attention to the above view of this most important subject, and observed:-- "We know something of the history of New Zealand, and the views held by her public men, and we are persuaded that it has been solely owing to the existence of Provincial Institutions that the integrity of the colony has been maintained." In the same article we refer to the views held by the late Duke of Newcastle, who had strongly recommended a provincial system, like that which had been established here, for the adoption of the South African colonies. He did this after Sir George Grey had left the Cape and had become for a second term Governor of New Zealand. We ask is it not also a significant circumstance that all the principal features of our Constitution should have been copied by that so recently conferred on the colonies now constituting the Dominion of Canada? We added, "What is still more to the purpose, will they not have to be adopted by the Australian Colonies if they are to effectually rid themselves of border duties, separation movements, and the other evils which they now labor under, or to which they are now constantly liable. We said that if we were going to commence de novo we should not choose the Provincial system for New Zealand. We took the precaution to observe that we did not maintain that the system satisfied every condition of local government, but at the same time we pointed out that it secured the unity of the colony and the seat of the Central Government at Wellington, and on that account alone it was not to be lightly regarded by those who valued the unity of the colony and the existence of a strong Colonial Government at Port Nicholson.

I insert the above not on account of its literary merit, nor to show that I early foresaw what would be one of the results of the abolition of the Provinces, but for the purpose of pointing out to those who will come after me that a matter which so much concerned the Wellington public was never once referred to by the Wellington press, during the whole time the question of the abolition of the provinces was under discussion. To me it is as clear as daylight that sooner or later either the two islands will each have one or more Provincial Governments of its own, or that they will be constituted two separate and independant colonies. The division of the two islands into provinces alone, prevented this being long ago accomplished. It was from the first astonishing to me, that the Wellington people could never view the subject in this light. The opposition of Sir George Grey to the abolition of the provinces was as fruitless, as probably will be the subsequent efforts that will be made by Wellington to prevent the disruption of the Colony.

THE COLONIAL PRESS.

Notwithstanding the enormous increase which has taken place in the

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number and circulation of newspapers during the last twenty-five years, the newspaper press itself is not so great a power in the Colony as it was a quarter of a century ago. Several reasons could be given to account for the fact, the principal one being that the leader writers then were themselves prominent members of the party they supported, who kept up, as far as the then means of communication would permit, a regular correspondence with each other. Anything appearing in one paper of more than ordinary importance was inserted and commented on in all the others which took the same side in politics. The leader writers of the popular party in those days were in fact bound together by common opinions, common ties, and common interests. The division of the Colony into Provinces, and the official positions most of the writers for the press then acquired, put an end to all this, and from that date there were no longer any Colonial newspapers, all public questions, generally speaking, being viewed and discussed from a mere Provincial stand point, while, as was to be anticipated, the imposition of a tax on all newspapers which are sent out of the Province in which they are published has tended to increase the evil. The newspaper, consequently, has ceased to be a power in the Colony, and only possesses a mere local or sectional influence. This state of things must be changed, if the public press is to exercise that influence on Government and Parliament which it exercises elsewhere. There must be more co-operation between those journals which aspire to lead public opinion, than has yet been witnessed. With them as with other interests, "united we stand, divided we fall." They may prove without such co-operation a financial success, but they will never become a political power, before which a corrupt Government would be made to stand in awe,

LOCALISM V. CENTRALISM.

WE are well aware that men scientifically trained for a duty, and receiving their instructions from a central authority equally as well trained, may be better qualified to discharge it efficiently than men chosen by the locality and resident on the spot; but on the other hand the latter best know the wants of the district, and as they directly suffer from any mistakes which may be committed, they naturally do their best to avoid them, and to rectify them when they occur. The question, however, is not be much whether public affairs would be better administered under a Localised than under a Centralised system, but which is likely to produce the best citizens. It is the public spirit, self-education, and individual energy evolved by the former system, and which a centralised system tends to emasculate and deaden, which are its distinguishing characteristics. The one creates a citizen, the other keeps him in a state of pupilage. The doing what is wanted ourselves instead of depending upon and paying others to do it for us, is what is meant by local self-government. Under a centralised system the Government is everything and the individual is counted for nothing. Under a localised system it is the well being of the individual rather than the greatness of the nation which is the first object of regard. It is only under the latter system that men can be said to constitute the State. It is only under such a system that we shall find "men who their duties know, and know their lights, and knowing, dare maintain them." The advocates of local self-government see more beauty and utility in a natural diversity than in an artificial uniformity. They care more, also, for individual freedom and local independence, than for extended empire and national glory. In brief, Centralisation gives apparent strength and unity to the Government; the Localised

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system real strength and freedom to the governed.

PLURAL VOTING.

HERETOFORE, when treating of the important question of the electoral franchise we have dwelt principally on the injustice of giving a plurality of votes in the election of members for the County Council to wealthy ratepayers, seeing that those councils will have the expenditure of funds to which the wealthy ratepayer had not contributed more than his poorer neighbor and seeing also that those councils will have the control and administration of affairs, in the right determining of which all ratepayers, rich and poor are alike interested. But we hold that apart from the injustice of the proposal, the giving a plurality of votes to men of large means over men of small means in the administration of such funds, as those that are to be placed under the control of County Councils, will either result in setting class against class, or in practically excluding a large portion of the population from any active participation in that system of local Government which it is the pretended aim of the present Ministry to confer upon the settlers at large. There is no necessity for granting any such exclusive political privileges to the wealthy classes; for however ill they may have fared under despotisms, they have always, under a popular form of Government, been well able to take care of themselves. We shewed in a recent issue that though in Athens every citizen was equally eligible to all the offices of State, it was only, generally speaking, the wealthy citizens who attained them. And has not the same thing, under almost an equally democratic Constitution, been witnessed here in the election of Superintendents and members both of the Provincial and General Legislatures? The political equality which has existed in this colony, since the Constitution Act was brought into operation, has done more to allay political agitation and discontent, to educate the public mind, to ensure true respect for men of worth and station, and to promote the peace and prosperity of the country, than many persons appear to be aware of. That in the future, if permitted fair play, it would do more in this direction we have not the slightest doubt. The effect of the democratical constitution, with its diffused and equal citizenship, in calling forth not merely strong attachment but painful self-sacrifice on the part of all Athenians, is well shewn in the xlviii. chapter of Grote's History of Greece, to which we feel happy to direct special attention at the present juncture. Whatever may be said of the political bias of that wealthy author, it can with confidence be asserted that the active part the people of Athens constantly took in public affairs, where it was held the man who stood aloof from them was not only harmless but useless, was one of the causes of their greatness, and which resulted in making Athens, in the words of Pericles, "The Schoolmistress of Greece."

OBSTACLES TO TRUTH.

THE cause of truth and the progress of knowledge have had many obstacles to contend with, which the steam press, rapid intercommunication, and popularly constituted Governments, have been at present powerless to remove. This is not owing chiefly lo any intellectual incapacity on the part of the Government generally, nor even in this country to that indifference which prevails among the settlers as a body to all matters outside of the narrow world in which they contentedly vegetate, and which a long course of material prosperity has been the means of fostering. Both of these causes have been in active operation, but they are not sufficient of themselves to account for the slow

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progress of truth compared with the facilities which now exist for its promulgation and advancement. The fact is the human mind is as full of errors, prejudices, and inconsistencies as a neglected garden is full of weeds, and no good seeds will have any chance of germinating until those weeds to a great extent have been eradicated. It will thus be seen that the evil is not that the mind is unoccupied, but that it is pre-occupied, which of itself is sufficient to account for the slow progress of true knowledge.

We have been led to the above reflections, which of course have a relationship to other subjects besides the one more particularly present to our mind, by observing how difficult it is to get the plainest political truth recognised, even when it has reference to matters which are admitted to be of the greatest personal or local importance. We find that it is not only necessary for misinformation to be dislodged from the mind, before true information can hope to effect an entrance, but to get the blatant disseminators of false information discredited, who with all the conceit and confidence of ignorance generally succeed in obtaining prior possession of the field. This is a somewhat difficult achievement, and is always a work of time. Evils, consequently, when originating in this cause, frequently grow to a head before a remedy can be applied.

EDUCATION AND CRIME

IT is many years since we first gave a great deal of time and much thought to the consideration of the question bow far the spread of what is called education would be likely to effect the number of criminals and the amount of crime; and we then arrived at the conclusion that it would not have so great an effect in this direction as was then generally anticipated. Longer experience and more extended knowledge have rather tended to strengthen than to modify the judgement we then arrived at on this important subject. We are well aware that the criminal statistics of Europe show that a very large proportion of criminals can either not read or write or that they possessed only a knowledge of these arts in a very imperfect degree. On the other hand those statistics shew that a very small proportion of criminals, when compared with the whole, had received a superior degree of instruction. We say the proportion is small when compared with the whole number of criminals examined, but that proportion might be large when compared with the comparatively few persons who really do receive superior education. But; such facts as those here referred to would rather tend to shew that criminals in the majority of cases sprung from the poverty stricken and neglected classes, and had been from their birth surrounded by the most unfavorable circumstances, than that the mere knowledge of the arts of reading and writing could possibly have any appreciable effect in preventing the commission of crime. It is obvious that such knowledge, by itself, could have but little, if any, effect in repressing criminal passions and criminal acts. All that can be claimed for it is that, on the whole, the amount of instruction a certain number of persons have received may be taken as evidence of the manner they have been brought up and of the state of their moral and social surroundings. Thus far, and no farther, the mere ability to read and write may be taken as an indication that the moral education of such has not been so neglected as it has been in those where this ability is lacking. Such knowledge would afford no certain knowledge that this was the case; but it is probably the best which can at present be obtained; and as an approximation it is to a certain extent worthy of credit. But even then such fact

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speak less emphatically in favor of mere school instruction than they do in favor of good circumstances and other influences in repression of crime. There is, however, too much evidence to shew, to which the events of every day are making lamentable additions, that no amount of education and favorable influences will prevent the commission by some persons of criminal acts.

CARRIED WITHOUT A DIVISION

(Wairarapa Standard, Oct. 19, 1876.)

THE time which has been occupied during the present session, in long and varied discussions, has not been altogether time wasted. To act first and think afterwards is the vice of savage tribes, of young children, and of infant Colonies. It has been the besetting sin of the Government and people of New Zealand during the whole of the late Vogelian era. This fact will be generally recognised before the Colony is much older. Both the Government and people, it will be found, have been too little in the habit of looking before leaping. We resolve first, and then consider at our leisure what will be the consequence of our hasty resolutions. How true is this of our Public Works policy! How true is it of our Abolition policy also! Instead of considering first what railways it would be desirable to undertake, and obtaining careful estimates of their cost, we determine first to raise a large public works loan, and then throw it on the floor of the House to be scrambled for by all present. Those who first came were first served, and obtained consequently the lions share of the spoils. Precisely the same course has been adopted with regard to our constitutional measures. Instead of first considering what kind of local institutions would now best suit a country like New Zealand, we first abolish those we possess, and then consider by what others they shall be replaced. In so doing we gratify that passion for action which Bagehot shews has been inherited from times when quick action generally led to desirable ends. This passion is more ready to pull down than to build up; because the former is the easier of the two. This passion which prompts to quick action is the characteristic of savages, and of all savage acts. The blow is given in haste and repentance follows at leisure.

We have said that the time which has been occupied in what is called wordy discussions during the present session, has not been altogether wasted. It has moderated the vice we had been plunging into of acting first and deliberating afterwards. Upon this subject Bagehot in his recent work on "Physics and Politics," has some excellent remarks which are well worth quoting. After shewing that an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind, he goes on to prove that, what he calls Government by discussion, has a tendency to prevent or mitigate the evil. He says, "It can and does do both in the very plainest way. If you want to stop instant and immediate action, always make it a condition that the action shall not begin till a considerable number of persons have talked over it, and agreed on it. If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity. Each kind of persons will have their spokesman, each spokesman will have his characteristic objection, and each his characteristic counter proposition, so in the end nothing will be done except that which is plainly urgent." For preventing hasty action

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there is nothing like a polity of discussion.

But there is no necessity to have recourse to Bagehot, or any other author, to prove the accuracy of what we have above stated. Is it not universally admitted that the Abolition resolutions themselves were the outcome of a sudden pique on the part of the late Premier? Is not the existence of the Legislative Council itself evidence of the necessity of providing against hasty legislative action; however little, in the matter of these constitutional changes, it has fulfilled the object for which it was designed? The fact of the Counties Bill being passed without a division has been thought of sufficient importance to be telegraphed to England; and that fact also ought to suggest a doubt on the part of our fellow settlers who are abolitionists whether they are doing wisely in aiding the Government and the large landed class (of which class the Legislative Council is mainly composed) in hastily destroying that system of political equality which was secured to them under the Constitution Act, and which this Counties Bill, carried without a division by the "Lords," completely ignores. If they would only reflect for a moment, the fact will be worth pondering on. It is quite as significant and suggestive to them as to Her Majesty's Ministers. The haste displayed by the Legislative Council in this instance, so unlike their usual proceedings, is pregnant with meaning. Would it have been in such a violent hurry had the object of the Counties Bill been to confer real local powers of self-government on the working settlers of the colony? During the present session the Opposition in the Lower House, and not the Upper House, has been really the one conservative element in the Government of the country. Such an element, as we have shewn, is at all times desirable, and never more so than when the ground laws of a country are being altered, and important constitutional measures in the Legislative Council are being 'carried without a division.' We thank thee, noble Marquis, for this information, which will prove of more advantage to the people, if they only knew how to use it, than that which is usually furnished to them from such a quarter.

THE TEACHER, THE OFFICIAL, AND THE JOURNALIST.

THERE is a notion very prevalent among our most successful colonists who have not had themselves the advantages of a school education, though it is by no means confined to them, that the teacher is not only able to furnish their children with elementary education, but also to supply them with brains. This is beyond his power. For a boy to distinguish himself at school he must have a natural capacity for acquiring knowledge, or the most skilful tuition will be to little purpose. So for a man to distinguish himself in any profession, department, or trade he must have a natural fitness for it, without which no amount of training will be of much service. In the public administrator and public journalist, both natural fitness and long training are indispensable qualifications for success. Every member of a free commonwealth, and consequently every settler in this Colony, is at full liberty to criticise every branch of public administration, but it does not therefore follow that he is equally qualified, or has an equal right to take the management of public affairs into his own hands. In like manner while every individual has the undoubted liberty to criticise alike the conduct of public men and of public affairs, it is necessary, if the criticism is to prove effective, that it be intrusted to men of tried and acknowledged capacity. As at one time it was taken for granted that

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anyone who could write a tolerable hand, and who knew the first four rules in arithmetic, if fit tor nothing else, was qualified to be a schoolmaster, so also it has been taken too much for granted that anybody with the due amount of nerve and "cram" to pass a successful examination was qualified to discharge satisfactorily the duties of a departmental officer. Indeed, even now, under our Parliamentary system of Government, no man, however well qualified by nature and education for the post, can fill any of the highest departments in the colony who fails to obtain a seat in Parliament.

It is now pretty generally admitted that for the school teacher, as for the lawyer and medical practitioner, natural fitness, as well as special training, are absolutely required; but it is not so with regard to the public administrator or public journalist. Any man, however unqualified, can get a Government post provided only he can secure sufficient political influence; while it must be admitted that it does not require any great amount of capacity, or journalistic experience, to conduct many of our colonial newspapers. With the medical and legal profession, as with the professional teacher, their natural fitness for the proper discharge of their duties, has not in all cases been sufficiently regarded. In the case of the latter, in this Province at all events, system, symmetry and show are over valued, while too little regard is paid by the Inspector to the diverse capacities, individual aptitudes, and particular idiosyncracies of the pupils. If on leaving school they were required to act like a regiment of soldiers the method and discipline so much insisted on in the school would prove an excellent preparatory training; but we question whether it would prove equally as well adapted for fitting them to become intelligent and active citizens of a free commonwealth. The special qualifications of the teacher to impart and the pupil to receive instruction are matters of much more importance than any machinery can be for turning out scholars of one uniform cut and pattern.

With regard to the Government official and public journalist, natural aptitude, and special training and experience are required for the discharge of the duties of both. Ministerial patronage, and our system of responsibility, as it is called, appear to have been specially designed to insure the minimum of these qualifications in the higher officers of the State; while low pay, excessive competition, and the practice of the anonymous in journalism, are well calculated to perform the same service for the public journalist. Until these matters are altered there is no chance for a change for the better in either service. With regard both to the public service and to public journalism, the principle of individual responsibility, which has in relation to the former been found to be so efficatious in Prussia, and in relation to the latter in France, is incompatible with our system of Ministerial Responsibility and of the anonymous in journalism. Both may be highly appreciated in an aristocratic and wealthy country like England; but it does not therefore follow that they are equally as well adapted for a country like New Zealand. Even in England the signatures of the authors are attached to the various articles which are published both in the Contemporary and the Fortnightly Review, and that practice has been warmly advocated by the late Richard Cobden, by the late Canon Kingsley, by Mr John Bright, by Mr Thomas Hughes and by many other of the foremost men in Britain. It may suit the wealthy newspaper proprietory at home to make the journal everything, and to treat the journalist as nobody, but it may be doubted whether the latter is in all cases a willing assenting party to such a one-

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sided arrangement. We know there are two sides to the question, and we also know that in the discussion of it the personal interests, feelings, and wishes of the journalist himself have always been carefully ignored.

SETTLEMENT OF THE WASTE LANDS.

THE conflicting opinions held on this important subject is a proof that it is not at present thoroughly understood. In the House of Representatives, in the session held in 1870, there appeared to be almost as many opinions as there were speeches. "If," said Mr Sheehan, "a hundred people came into this Colony intending to settle and take up land, it would be well even to give them the land. The country otherwise would be idle and unoccupied, and be a positive loss to the Government who bought it. If the people were living upon the land they would contribute to the exports and imports of the country and to the local taxation; and although no price was received for the land, yet a return would be received from the occupation of it. At present, every difficulty was thrown in the way of a number of people who desire to form special settlements; and yet three or four gentlemen resident in the Colony, who desired to obtain large blocks, experienced no difficulty whatever in getting them at a cheap rate." Dr Hodgkinson spoke strongly in favor of the free grant system, and showed that it had been successful in all countries where it had been honestly carried out. Mr Stafford, on the other hand, was opposed to the free grant system, yet even he was constrained to admit that he knew "a portion of New Zealand where an area of country two hundred miles long is completely shut off from the rest of the Colony through being in the hands of large proprietors. In districts such as those, the carpenter, the blacksmith, the shoemaker, or any other handicraftsman whose presence would be beneficial, is entirely unknown; and I have known instances where a blacksmith has absolutely had to beg, hat in hand, for a bit of land big enough to put a shop on, the Government having parted with their right in every acre of it. Now, if we are going to continue the possibility of that system--that is, the aggregation of these large estates without interspersing them with small holdings --we shall experience none of the benefits derivable from settlement, and our immigration policy will result in comparative failure. If you do not give ground to persons who are prepared to hold small tenements they cannot and will not remain in the country. They will go to those countries where better provision is made." But, as was to be expected. Sir George Grey spoke with a thorough knowledge of the subject. "If," he said "the Government are determined to consider the welfare of the country at large, then the manner in which they propose to lock up large districts of land for pastoral purposes, and the mode in which they propose that the land shall be paid for, cannot be justified. Both these proposals are unfair to the country, and the people at large. Arrangements should be made that every man who purchased land should have the right to run his stock on the waste land in his neighborhood, so as to enable him profitably to work his farm. The endeavor now made to perpetuate the state of things that exists, and to enrich a few favored people at the expense of the mass of the community, was most unjust and unfair."

BUSH SETTLEMENTS.

Two years or more before the debate referred to above, took place, the following appeared in the Standard:--

In the summer of 1834, now nearly forty years ago, the writer found

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himself at an hotel on the great road which had then just been completed through the forest which stretched from Lake Simcoe to Lake Huron in Upper Canada. Settlements had been established on one side of this road at intervals of seme five miles throughout its whole extent. These settlements were composed chiefly of the men, with their wives and children, who had been employed in making the road, as each of them who had worked at road making for twelve months entitled himself to a free grant of a section of land, in addition to wages and rations during the time he was thus employed. At the time of our visit they had only recently been located on their sections, and even then a considerable number of substantial log houses, large clearings, and luxuriant wheat crops were to be seen, not only on those sections which had been set aside on one particular side of the road for these laborers, but on the opposite side also, the land having been purchased from the Crown at an enhanced price by settlers having more or less capital at their command. This enhanced price being freely given on account of the road having been constructed, and of the facilities which existed for obtaining the labor they required. A timber and grist mill had been already erected, and carpenters, wheelwrights, blacksmiths shoemakers, and other mechanics and artizans were settling in the vicinity owing to the anticipated demand for their services; from £5 to as much as £50 being freely given for an acre of land which a few years before would not have commanded 5s. By this scheme all parties were benefitted; the road laborers; the small capitalists and tradesmen; and the Government, the Crown lands being sold in 100 acre sections at from three to five times the amount they would otherwise have realised. At the end of the road abutting on Kempenfelt Bay--one of the clearest and most beautiful sheets of water in the world --a township had been laid off, on Crown lands, none of the lots in which had then been sold, though there had been two hotels, one or two stores, and a number of dwelling houses already erected; as the Government well knew that if the sale was postponed more money would be obtained for these lots than the whole cost of the aforesaid road had amounted to. We afterwards saw the effects of the credit land system adopted by the Upper Canada Land Company, and the marvellous rise of townships on the route of the Erie Canal; but from that day to the present moment we never saw a scheme put into operation for the settlement of the "Backwoods," so likely to prove advantageous to the laboring classes, small capitalists, and the land revenue than the one we have been referring to. There appears to us no good and sufficient reason why a somewhat similar scheme, with the necessary modifications, should not be adopted in this colony.

SMALL FARM SYSTEM.

To secure the beneficial settlement of the Waste Lands we know no better plan than the sale of land in small sections, with a right of commonage. It is not only the best system for encouraging immigration of the right sort, and for providing immigrants and the sons of old settlers with permanent homes, but it is also the system best adapted to meet the circumstances, to answer the requirements, and to develope the agricultural resources of the Colony. Yet, though the small farm system has been a success wherever it has been tried, the Government has gone on selling the public estate for mere revenue purposes, under the pretence that the opening up of the country by roads is the best, instead of being only one of the means of promoting its profitable settlement.

All authorities acknowledge that the fact of the ownership of land

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being vested in him who cultivates it, developes in the man himself very valuable qualities--frugality, foresight, industry, economy, and, above all, that sentiment of independence which is so dear to an Englishman, and which probably more than any other prompts him to abandon his native country and found for himself a new home even in a wilderness. Nor is it by any means proved that large farms are more productive than small ones, or that, in a new country, they can be more profitably cultivated. It is true that the system of small holdings excludes to a certain extent the adoption of scientific methods and the possession of costly machinery; but probably other methods which the small farmer only can employ may prove equally as effective, and machinery can generally be hired when required. Nor should it be forgotten that small holdings render unnecessary the employment of hired labor, the high price of which in a new country prevents bush land and large farms being cultivated at a profit. Were it absolutely necessary that the whole available land of the country should be divided into very large or very small holdings, we think that the balance of the advantages would be found on the side of the latter. But there is no such n cessity. Judging from the present state of England with regard to this subject there is more danger of large estates absorbing small ones than of the former being too minutely subdivided. The question, however, which we are at present concerned with is, which of the two systems is best adapted for securing the successful colonisation of a country like New Zealand? It appears to us that the small farm system is best adapted for this purpose.

SELF-GOVERNING INSTITUTIONS.

THE following brief reference to the political views of Senor Castelar will appropriately conclude these "Leaves from my Writings":--

In a speech he made in 1870 at Madrid, Senor Castelar points out that that cohort of great French orators, of great tribunes, who brought the honey of Attic eloquence on their lips, and the recollection of the Amphictyonic league in their hearts, were all federalists. Almost all of them died on the scaffold in the prime of life for having opposed the gigantic dictatorship which, absorbing municipal and provincial rights, and the power of the State, necessarily tended to bring in Caesarism, which is impossible in Federalism. The French revolution would have been less powerful, but more enduring, if it had been federal. "Little republics" continues our authority, "within a great nation: this is the saving formula." In his opinion the instability of the first French Republic was owing to its centralisation, to its neglect of the municipality, and to its trampling on the rights of districts. On the other hand the stability of the American Republic was insured by its organised and self-governing institutions; and by the division of the country into a series of counties and states, also self-governing, each within its own sphere, by means of which authority was united to liberty, and the freedom as well as the power of the nation were firmly secured.

THE END.

WILLIAM F. ROYDHOUSE, PRINTER.